28 March 2008

The Parliament’s budgetary control committee voted yesterday (26 March) to approve the Parliament’s accounts for 2006, with 29 votes in favour and four against, with one abstention.Van Buitenen said that after he had published on his website a summary of the internal auditor’s report, he had been contacted by MEPs’ assistants and former assistants, alleging a range of further irregularities.In a letter that he circulated to the members of the committee yesterday afternoon just before the vote, he said that the allegations include faking an MEP’s place of residence to boost allowances, faking signatures to qualify for daily attendance allowances and faking meetings to create attendance lists.On secretarial allowances, Van Buitenen said that irregular practice went beyond the scope of the internal audit: kickback payments were made to MEPs by service providers to win a contract.Van Buitenen said he had more work to do before sending the results of his investigations to the President of the Parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering, and the anti-fraud office OLAF. “This information is not yet complete and is still being received and assembled,” he said.He did not want his allegations to be limited to only certain countries or particular political groups.“The whole system is rotten,” he said.

20 March 2008

Transparency from the troughers in Strasbourg - Some hope!

Open Europe announces transparency initiative

Following a series of damaging stories about the European Parliament, Open Europe has launched the European Parliament Transparency Initiative. We have emailed all UK MEPs asking them to disclose certain details of their expenses. We will be publishing regular reports on the progress of the initiative. Further details can be found on the